High-ranking visitor from South Korea
The South Korean ambassador to Switzerland, Haeryong Kwon, recently paid the BiG a visit. He was interested in seeing the Korea collection, which contains several unique treasures.
It was a special honour for the library team to have the South Korean ambassador Haeryong Kwon pay the BiG a friendly visit on 9 November 2018 – in his very first year in office here in Switzerland. He was accompanied by Moon Ji Young, a co-worker and member of his closest entourage, as well as by Jean-Jacques Joss, the president of the Korea Association.
Daniel Kohler, the head of the BiG, received the visitors and gave a tour of the library. He presented to the ambassador the services offered by the BiG, and introduced him to an assortment of documents taken from the Korea collection.
Archives of the oldest peace mission
Members of the Swiss Armed Forces have been stationed in Korea since 1953. At that time, Switzerland, Sweden, Poland and Czechoslovakia took on the task of monitoring the ceasefire between North and South Korea. The Korea mission is the Swiss Armed Forces' oldest peace support mission.
In 1954, former Korea mission delegates founded the Korea Association. Its archives have been located at the BiG since 1999. They mostly contain personal items such as diaries, movies, photo albums and slide collections that portray Swiss missions in Korea and give decades-spanning insights into the everyday life of the Korean people.
Diaries, photo albums, barbed wire
As the person in charge of the BiG's collections, Christine Rohr-Jörg introduced Ambassador Kwon to a selection of particularly impressive items, including a length of barbed wire taken from the border region and a white band that once delineated the demarcation line between North and South Korea. The ambassador then immersed himself in photo albums and diaries that give access to an almost forgotten Korea. He then thanked the BiG in a friendly farewell for its efforts in the conservation of these important items, and for making them accessible to the public.
The Korea collection cannot be accessed through the library catalogue but can be viewed on location by request.
- Korea collection of the Library Am Guisanplatz